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Abstract

Bordering, Political Landscapes and Social Arenas: Potentials and Challenges of Evolving Border Concepts in a post-Cold War World (EUBORDERSCAPES), financed though the EU's 7 th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development, was a four-year research project that tracked and interpreted conceptual change in the study of borders. As part of its basic methodology, the EUBORDERSCAPES studied the manner in which social, economic , cultural and geopolitical change, particularly since 1989, had influenced understandings of state borders. The objective included also an engagement with major paradigmatic shifts in scientific debate, and in particular in the social sciences. Building on the border studies state of debate, the project set out to capture the opened up possibilities for questioning the rationales behind everyday border-making by understanding borders as institutions, processes and symbols. From the outset, borders were taken not as givens, but understood to emerge through socio-political processes of border-making or bordering that take place within society. The approach of the project emphasised the social significance and subjec-tivities of state borders while critically interrogating 'objective' categories of state territoriality and international relations. In progressing beyond the state of the art, EUBORDERSCAPES sought to demonstrate that important connections could be uncovered between borders as a 'challenge' to national as well as EU policies and borders as potential elements of political innovation through conceptual (re) framings of social, political, economic and cultural spaces. The project set out to provide a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding of borders as resources in terms of the exercise of power, the management of conflict, cross-border cooperation , and the everyday negotiation of borders by 'ordinary' citizens and non-citizens. State borders were seen to reflect and thus help us interpret tensions as well as points of connection within intercultur-al and interstate relations. In a very direct manner, these tensions are reflected in the practical consequences of controlling borders through security policies,
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Cross-Border Review, European Institute of Cross-Border
         


EUBORDERSCAPES - Potentials and Challenges
of Evolving Border Concepts

  

th Framework Programme for Research and Tech-
nological Development, was a four-year research project that tracked and
             
-




capture the opened up possibilities for questioning the rationales behind eve-
ryday border-making by understanding borders as institutions, processes and

emerge through socio-political processes of border-making or bordering that

 -
tivities of state borders while critically interrogating objective’ categories of

-
tions could be uncovered between borders as a ‘challenge’ to national as well
as EU policies and borders as potential elements of political innovation through

project set out to provide a nuanced and critical re-reading and understanding
of borders as resources in terms of the exercise of power, the management of


thus help us interpret tensions as well as points of connection within intercultur-

in the practical consequences of controlling borders through security policies,

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 
border and visa regimes and immigration policies at the same time that global




-

thus focused on the emerging epistemologies of how state borders are per-

-
es, such as key academic debates, political discourses, ethnographic research,
media representations and shifting cultural understandings of the construction
           
between national understandings in terms of demarcations based on ethnic-
  


project also attempted to illuminate the consequences of restrictive and secu-

Although formal state boundaries often serve as a reference point in discus-
sions of territory, identity and Europe, the project did not focus only on the

project, it became clear that the recent developments have deeply changed
the power of borders by modifying the dialectical relation between the bor-
            

  
-
mative power of international organizations, including the EU and the power

Shifting conceptions of borders
The project adopted a complex, multidimensional and dynamic concept of
borders, encompassing not simply territorial delineation, but also political, so-
-
-
derscapes’ plays and important role in our conceptualization of border for it
 
enabling a productive understanding of the processual, de-territorialized and

137
 
dispersed nature of borders and their ensuing regimes in the era of globali-
   
viewpoint allowed us to view borders genealogically and to historicize border-


but also to better understand the ambiguity that marks the EU’s engagement

In our case studies, the understanding of borders as lines of division and barri-


the contact aspect of borders was more pronounced in more open and peace-


        -
-

neighbourhood countries which agree to cooperate in policing and control of
EU’s external borders and regulation of ‘undesired migrants’ are granted privi-

migrants, including economic migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa as well as the
refugees from the Middle East face severe restrictions in their attempts to reach
     
    
-

In the post-Soviet cases, the divisive aspects of borders were emphasized and
borders were perceived more as issue of state-building than of cultural divi-

nature of the current borders, dating back to early Soviet border-making, be-
     
        -
 





         


138
 
-
ible between Central and Eastern European states such as Poland or Hungary
 
      -
      
   



Changes in the conceptions of borders


were initiated by EU institutions and policies, namely, by the institutional debor-

the external borders of the EU are more susceptible to geopolitical processes



teams noted struggles that consist of strategies of adaptation, contestation
and resistance that challenge the externalization and the top-down geopo-
litical control of EU’s external borders, often perceived through the metaphor
-
cess of contestation and challenge the top-down narratives and policies, such
          
hegemonic borderscape in which migrants engage in performance and rep-
resentation of their in-between identities which challenge notions of nation-

In the post-Soviet states, the impact of the dissolution of Soviet Union still ex-
   
   
   

-
bours who used to be part of the Soviet Union have become stronger and




139
 

-

of sovereignty are more acute, and the EU is blamed for failing to guarantee

         

and Middle East regions was commented in most national media as an act of
-
ern European case, in Poland, the annexation of Crimea by Russia has raised
-
hood, the issues of sovereignty are perceived in the context of de-colonization,
and are strongly debated in the cases of Gibraltar and Spanish enclaves of

paradoxically, despite having territorial claims against Spain, Morocco never-

The issue of state sovereignty seems to be more acute in the former Soviet

policy of multi-level and multi-speed reintegration of post-Soviet space, with
most advanced form of such reintegration represented by the Eurasian Eco-

         -
-
    
of post-Soviet countries as constraints on their sovereignty, in both economic

In the case of Israel and Palestine, political problems lie at the very heart of

of occupation in which one side has both sovereignty and control, while the
   
based on fear of the other, strengthens notions of self-determination and politi-
cal autonomy for both sides, leading to a desire for the construction of borders
based on bilateral agreement rather than the current situation of imposed bor-

The issues of ethnic and national claims dominate border discourses as well as



and Abkhazia in Georgia, and most recently the crisis over Crimea and Eastern


 
 
formal borders and cultural and ethnic borders, which can be dated back to the
Stalin’s administrative divisions as well as imperial history of Russian, Hapsburg

-
nia has territorial claims towards Turkey; the disputes over Gibraltar and Span-


-
tral and Eastern Europe, the debates about national minority rights have also
become more moderate, for example, in the cases of Hungarian minority in


has less to do with national claims and more with cultural, and especially reli-
-



Ethnic and national claims are also closely connected to the issues of self-deter-

cited above the ethnic and national claims have self-determination, ultimately
   
some issues pertaining to political autonomy that are not directly connected

no autonomy and thus is thoroughly dependent on the decision-making in the
-



-

Emerging problems aecting borders
Monitoring of media and observations in the case study countries suggest a

is a strong tendency in to medialize the refugee crisis, which spectacularizes


     

141
 
      
borders of the EU, particularly Mediterranean and South-East Europe, there are
-
      
themselves, but more with the perceived unfairness of the proposed quota
system, which is especially opposed in Central and Eastern European countries,
       
and the failure of the EU to deal with it have given rise to Euroscepticism and

In the Mediterranean, where the issues of refugees and more generally forced

-

-
ders; however, because of the perils of the sea-crossing which results in many
-
iterranean becomes the space where humanitarian and securitarian discourses

with its neighbours in controlling the borders is becoming even more impor-

success, in the case of Morocco, where Morocco has received privileged access


on Middle Eastern migrants between the EU operates according to a similar

borders with Turkey
The rise of radicalism and violence on the borders is also related to the refu-
   





 

been radicalization of right-wing groups in Europe itself, mostly in Central and

-
portant issue is the so-called Ukrainian crisis, following the annexation of Crimea

142
 


There is considerable strengthening of border controls from the Ukrainian side,
restrictions on crossing the border by Russian men, and these actions are in
contrast with the previous practices of open border that used to be crossed on







concerns with security were expressed in Finland, where the Ukrainian crisis was
interpreted as a collapse of multi-polar world, and the Finnish-Russian border
became seen not simply as EU’s external border, but as a civilizational bound-

Further away from Russia’s borders, in Bulgaria, the Ukrainian crisis led to a
separation of discourses into pro-Russian and pro-EU strands, and a raising
-

beginning, it was perceived as an outcome of intervention of multitude of play-


These interpretations pointed to a new perception of Ukraine’s border as an
external border of the EU, and can thus be taken as a case of rebordering from
      
-
selves separated by new division line, as Armenia joined Eurasian Economic

complicating relations between the two neighbouring countries
Borders as Constructions
 -


-


of UK-Ireland border, an active reconceptualization of a national border as an


143
 
EU and interpret the developments as part of the UK-Ireland peace process or

       -

promoting of cross-border cooperation, does not necessarily lead to removal

-
ferent as German-Polish and Polish-Russian border and the metropolitan area

  
-
ings has been the lack of understanding of similarity between border practices
 

      

 
Russian citizens frequently cross the border in Kaliningrad region, Russians do
so much more frequently, and the main goal for them is shopping for all kinds

-
action across Polish-Ukrainian border is similarly asymmetrical, with Ukrainians
crossing mostly for reasons of work and study, while Polish visit Ukraine for


Everyday experiences of borders vary greatly according to various groups of

active in cross-border cooperation and interaction, while mental barriers re-
    -
ian-Tunisian border, where the second generation of Tunisian migrants have

all our case studies had been active in exploiting the economic opportunities


cross-border activities were fading away, as was the case with Russian-Ukraini-

In terms of narrative construction, the opening of the borders and increased
interaction does lead to more multi-vocal perspective and can help to change


144
 
    
-

    

been the communication via various technological means, without physically

studies, our research, especially in the Polish-Ukrainian case, demonstrated that
-


-
 -


-

level of discourses and narratives, they play an important role in medializing


discourses or challenge it by creating alternative, counter-hegemonic narra-

Linkages between Traditional and Post-Traditional Borders
 -
   

        
Consequently, it is more relevant to speak not of the continuum between the
            
concept of borderscapes that we employ is the main conceptual tool that links



         
by more permanent immigration following the restrictions on migration intro-
 
          
cases, the constructed symbolic borders between femininities and masculinities

145
 
-
ible in the narratives of immigrant LGBT resistance to established norms in host
and diasporic communities as well as in the narratives of inter-generational

   

experiences of the border, and often the role of family and relationality may
be more easily addressed in women-authored narratives of border and cross-
-
ally and has a particular role in the making of diasporic identity and migrant
subjectivity as our analysis of the role of food in autobiographical writing
shows, it is a link with the past and serves as a means to reconstruct and main-





young people were much more active in cross-border interaction, and they
-
-

strengthening of what used to be fully open administrative borders between

practically open, until recently, border between Russia and Ukraine to closed
border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, many older people remained nos-
-


Tunisian migrants in Sicily had developed multiple identities and belonging to


-
 
-

-
-

everyday practices was the petty trade of military gear on the Polish-Ukrainian
border – whereby a peaceful border gets temporarily transformed into an in-

146
 
  
-
political changes of the crisis in Ukraine, travel for shopping still continues and


university in Kaliningrad, while at the same time it is cheaper than studying in

   
           
distance and outsourcing of border control functions to North African states

In the CEE region, very little semblance of what might be called cosmopolitan”

implement ‘Europeanized’ identities were usually met with local resistance, and
-
ception we observed was young cultural and functional elites, who underlined


kinship or cultural similarity in the border regions certainly helped to soften
 

betweenness in relation to the cultures in which they are immersed, which can

In the post-Soviet space, Russia has stressed the importance of ‘compatriots’
and ‘Russian speaking’ people, who continue to live in the countries of for-

   

of this identity are far-reaching, as the concept of Russkii Mir is also a corner-

observed in the case of Eastern Ukraine, and Transnistria where pro-Russian
orientations continue to shape perceptions of borders, even in the context


well as in Gibraltar suggests a positive impact in increasing in daily interaction
-

expectations that cross-border interaction and the EU can have positive impact
          

147
 

in Transnistria, the regular cross-border interaction has not led to any progress

Top-down Europeanization and cross-border cooperation initiatives have had
           
 
down policies were partially resisted by both elites, who sought to protect their
privileges, and populations, who opposed the encroachment on their under-

quickly turned into Euroscepticism and short-term re-bordering with the on-

Slobozhanschina Euroregion as well as cross-border cooperation projects in
the Russian-Finnish border, the withdrawal of funding at the end of the pro-
       
Kaliningrad region, the cooperation continues with the involvement of local

-

metropolitan border areas, such as Greater Geneva and Lille-Kortjik-Tournai,
despite high level of functional integration that is supported by political and



These activities usually take place at more peaceful borders, and can give rise to

-

case, with the strengthening of state control, the funding from Scandinavian
countries, which used to sustain this collaboration, has become unwelcome,
and the artists who were engaged in this collaboration have been marginalized

Policy Options and Scenarios
In considering future developments and possible policy responses it is impor-
-



-

148
 


EU’s top-down policies and initiatives were able to engineer debordering and
promote interaction across national borders, not least by mobilizing local civil

imaginaries of top-down EU domination of the border interaction have been

At the same time, EU should take more seriously the feelings of those who
resist debordering and emphasize their national, as opposed to European, be-

has potential of destabilizing the process of debordering and can lead to a rise
of xenophobic discourses and movements, even in rather prosperous and well

and related functional integration, national borders remain strong markers of
           
-
frastructures, enhancing labour market integration, resolving negative exter-


-
tive deterritorialization, there is a need to recode the state border as an object
of recognition able to promote a shared sense of place and belonging
-
es, such as in the Mediterranean, EU’s response to migration across the sea has

from a distance and outsourcing of policing of EU’s borders to neighbouring
countries such as Morocco and Turkey has failed to resolve the problems of mi-

more committed EU, which would not only promote the Eurocentric vision but

a policy shift would also require broadening the spectrum of actors involved,
grasping the dialogic nature of bordering processes and imaginaries, as well as
the tension between institutional formal modes of political agency and social
-

to acknowledge that the current arrangement is asymmetric and puts unjustly

redistributes costs, and puts security and the humanitarian aspects of migration


149
 
The EU’s geopolitical involvement in Eastern neighbourhood, particularly in
-



East Europe this involvement has led to rising Euroscepticism, and thus threat-

 

-
pean integration project Eastern Europe in the context of an ongoing military


-



EU, most recently through an Association Agreement, suggests a need for a

-
ated and involve close interaction between those countries that have moved
further in the process of association with the EU, such as Ukraine, Moldova and
-
tory leads to increasing tensions with Russia, which in turn lead to rising secu-

to its own security; with particular regards to the borders this commitment is


At the same time, EU has important, and yet not fully tapped potential in con-
     

-
tine to Transnistria to Nagorno-Karabakh EU is perceived as an honest bro-


           


   


 
impacts of this support may be less obvious and less immediate, they can have



In the sphere of cultural production, the EU can facilitate the role of cultural
production in despectacularizing narratives of border crises presented in the
 
can bring more wide-ranging narratives into public debate, reducing the im-
           
ethical ways of making individual experiences of border-crossing accessible in

to border-crossers, but should include wider range of actors, such as bureau-




through further research the memory and utopia dimension of migrant bor-
der-crossing, including collective and individual memories of migration and of

Concluding Observations

territories and the notion that borders are physical outcomes of political, social

     -
cordingly, international relations take place between sovereign governments

 

where a perceived set of unifying attributes and features is gradually replaced

-

separating container boxes is largely a representation of political elites, because


          
These can be conceptualized as institutional vs interpersonal levels, or hierar-
    

151
 
level is represented most obviously by the EU, with its policies of de-bordering
within the Union, cross-border cooperation initiatives both within the EU and
with the neighbourhood, and cooperation with neighbourhood countries in



for example national and local authorities, and local vs national and interna-

of the border-making process can sometimes complement or be at odds with


both the political and business elites have very positive views about open bor-
der, some groups of population and some populist movements have been

people, and population alike support softening and opening of the border with
Poland, while federal authorities in Moscow are more concerned with issues of

-
          
  
emerge around border contexts and that connect the realm of high politics
   
-

thinking about the border and bordering processes not only on the border, but
also beyond the line of the border, beyond the border as a place, beyond the
landscape through which the border runs, and beyond borderlands with their




-


‘the complexity and vitality of, and at, the border, emphasising its status as a
landscape of resistance to the simple exploitation of territory by the nation-





152

As borderscapes, borders in fact cannot be reduced to instruments of terms

must be expanded to include what is happening every day at the EU’s external

-
ment and blocking and in which borders are produced by social institutions
-
scends the panoptic gaze implicit in border spectacles as it follows the discur-
sive and performative construction of migration, refugee crises and their con-

Eurocentrism because migrants and refugees become actors and protagonists

artistic expressions of borders and border crossings can be regarded as expres-

politics of a new in-between identity that dwells in a borderscape where the

process involves various individuals, groups, and institutions on state and local



the borderscape is to return to the question of who decides where the border

References
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Economy’, Theory, Culture &

Geopolitics 20

Geopolitics


Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory’s Edge.

... Research highlights that borderland locals can follow or resist how the state "ideologically constructs itself at borders" (Wilson and Donnan 1998, 24;cf. Zorko 2015; van Houtum, Laine, and Scott 2016). This is also the case when there are changed border policies such as newly initiated transborder regions. ...
... Houtum 1999;Strüver 2003) also display the opposite. Emphasis on national belonging can prevail despite individuals' cross-border experiences and dominant de-bordering discourses ( van Houtum, Laine, and Scott 2016). As van Houtum, Laine, and Scott (2016) phrase it, social borders or mental barriers often prevail. ...
... Emphasis on national belonging can prevail despite individuals' cross-border experiences and dominant de-bordering discourses ( van Houtum, Laine, and Scott 2016). As van Houtum, Laine, and Scott (2016) phrase it, social borders or mental barriers often prevail. One important documented reason, is language differences (van Houtum, Laine, and Scott 2016). ...
Article
Against the background of the transnational Barents Cooperation, the article explores the multisided views of borderland locals in Kirkenes. Based on semi-structured interviews, there were seven, partly contradictory, perspectives on Russians and a local orientation towards Russia. The same individuals expressed views that went beyond either endorsement, resistance or ambivalence on increased borderland integration. Rather, interviewees integrated several perspectives in different combinations to simultaneously express sentiments as different as skepticism, pragmatism, historical gratitude and local pride. The emphasis on multisided statements differs from some previous border studies that emphasize positioned and situational borderland identities and borderland experiences. Following Kurki (Kurki, T. 2016. Personal Trauma versus Cold War Rhetoric in the Finnish-Russian Borderland. In The Dynamics of Cultural Borders, ed. Anu Kannike and Monika Tasa. University of Tartu Press, 76), I argue that the repertoire of perspectives people related to conveyed layered meanings of the border that reflected a complex present and different historical periods. Beyond borderland contexts, paying attention to individuals’ expressions of different perspectives can contribute to increased understanding of seemingly contradictory attitudes.
... According to Houtum, Laine, and Scott (2016), the conceptions of borders have shifted due to large-scale geopolitical rearrangements. In Europe, the dissolution of the Soviet Union still has a vital impact even after 25 years; the geographical position of asymmetries has moved, but they are still present. ...
Article
After September 2001, but particularly after the events of 2015 and 2016, the geopolitical situation of the world was radically changed. New hot spots were created, including the European migrant crisis and its local manifestations. In this paper, we focus on the Serbian‐Hungarian border where the fence building has turned this research relevant. Through a survey including mapping the mental cognition of borders, we monitor the hypothesis that the closedness of the border has appeared in the minds of the local population, but their security perception has not increased significantly. Persisting asymmetries and polarized revelations are the landmarks of the changing border zone.
Article
The conceptual evolution of borders has been characterised by important changes in the last twenty years. After the processual shift of the 1990s (from border to bordering), in recent years there has been increasing concern about the need to critically question the current state of the debate on the concept of borders. Within this framework, this article explores the critical potential of the borderscapes concept for the development of alternative approaches to borders along three main axes of reflection that, though interrelated, can be analytically distinguished as: epistemological, ontological and methodological. Such approaches show the significant potential of borderscapes for future advances of critical border studies in the era of globalisation and transnational flows, thereby contributing to the liberation of (geo)political imagination from the burden of the ‘territorialist imperative’ and to the understanding of new forms of belonging and becoming that are worth being investigated.
Introduction Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge
  • P K Rajaram
  • C Grundy-Warr
Rajaram, P.K. and C. Grundy-Warr (2007) Introduction. In: PK Rajaram and C Grundy-Warr (eds) Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp ix-xl.